A MEDIA INSTIGATED RIOT

bodies were taken around the city in a macabre celebration of
"people power"

bodies
were taken around the city in a macabre celebration of "people
power". Even as this happened, in broad daylight, Kathmandu residents by
the thousands chose to watch and not intervene. In 1992, this writer had asked,
"What is it that allows people to be murdered in such a way? Why is it
that such violence was tolerated by the same people who had only recently
brought an end to a supposedly ruthless system? ....Do these killings
constitute an aberration or are they evidence of deeply embedded violent tendencies
in our
society?" From today`s vantage point, it is easy to see that those
killings were not an aberration.

If
Kathmandu`s residents were capable of such violence in 1990, we have become
even more violent due to the particular history of the intervening decade.
Anyone who cared to notice that the rioters in Kathmandu were overwhelmingly
young and male would have to ask whether being young and male are significant
for an understanding of violence in Nepal today. They are. High levels of
unemployment amongst semi-educated youth, easy circulation of pessimism in
college campuses, and the macho ways in which personal and societal problems
are solved in the universe of Nepali and Hindi films, have given birth to a
highly violent masculine imagination among this segment of the population.

The rioters in Kathmandu were living that imagination.
Ghetto violence of the urban underclass in

The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.